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Is the Ride over for Uber?

smartcompany.com.au

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Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#101

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

vladf wrote: post #76
voz_ wrote: post #25

Uber is an example of a company that wants to be a tech company, but (1) really shouldn't (2) kinda lacks the technical leadership to really be one. It feels like the right call, around 2017, was to either: (A) double down and build a platform for every kind of physical multisided marketplace (matching as a service, maps+routing+locations+geofences as a service, physical product ops as a service, etc) Where Amazon we…

Wow, strong disagree. Having interviewed a couple of candidates from this space, even for just rideshare pricing for both demand and supply sides is an incredibly sophisticated statistics and economics problem, where appropriate modeling can have long term revenue impact. Even within this vertical it seems you’d need a lot more than 15 engineers.

Thanks for this post. I do a hard eye-roll every time I read one of these "Hey, I could build that company's website in a weekend" or "They should only need a few engineers to keep it running" type posts. If anything it just shows that the commenter has 0 idea what they're talking about.

I'm not at all saying that there isn't a good amount of "fat to trim" at large companies, but often times the hard work at these big companies is making a difficult problem (or, rather, set of problems), especially at scale, look trivially easy.

An example I think proves this: In Austin, TX, Uber and Lyft stopped operations in the city for about a year in 2016-2017 when voters passed a law requiring fingerprint checks (the state legislature eventually overrode this law, which is a common feature of Austin city-Texas state relations). During that time, Austin was flooded with a host of startup rideshare apps, some funded by some technology high-fliers. Even though I liked to use the RideAustin app because it was a non-profit, paid drivers more and funded a charity I support, there is no denying the apps were a far, far cry from Uber and Lyft's apps. Even after a full year there was really no comparison in the quality of the apps.

Just the ride-sharing part of Uber does about 15 million rides a day, in thousands of cities, each with different regulations and legal frameworks. Uber on-boards about 50,000 new drivers a month. Anyone who thinks this can all be managed with "15 engineers" has not thought through the problem.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#102

Post by bogota »

voz_ wrote: post #25

Uber is an example of a company that wants to be a tech company, but (1) really shouldn't (2) kinda lacks the technical leadership to really be one. It feels like the right call, around 2017, was to either: (A) double down and build a platform for every kind of physical multisided marketplace (matching as a service, maps+routing+locations+geofences as a service, physical product ops as a service, etc) Where Amazon we…

Im sorry you think you can maintain the rider and driver app with 15 engineers… I really can’t take anything else you say seriously as your knowledge of uber as a business discredited the rest of your thoughts.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#103

Post by bogota »

hotpotamus wrote: post #99
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the "small team of focused engineers" trope for apps like uber. It's so easy to blow past that number. Website? That's a team. iPhone app? That's a team. Android? Another team. Data collection and A/B testing platform for all the front ends? Another team. Backend? A team. Infrastructure? Another team. AI solutions for problems like delivery time estimation? Another very expensive team. BI for the executives? Y…

Fairly recently I moved from a company of about 8,000 to a company of 54 or so. At first I wondered how the tiny company got anything done, but they've been around for 30 years so I figured they must have some skill. Now I wonder what the hell all those 8,000 people actually did. Each team you just named is 1-2 people at the current gig.

That really doesn’t say anything. Those teams all do very different thinks depending on the problem space. You’re not really making an argument though you are just stating two situations and hoping people arrive at your conclusion of big company is stupid.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#104

Post by naravara »

addicted wrote: post #19
aetherson wrote: post #9

The problem with Uber Eats is exactly the same as the problem with Uber's rideshare: there's no difficult-to-copy element of it. It's been clear for at least seven years that it's easy to spin up a food delivery service, just the same way it's easy to spin up a rideshare service. The basic technology is something a small team can conjure up out of nowhere in a few months, the two sided marketplace is heavily incented…

Let’s say there was just 1 delivery service. Could they charge enough delivery fees to actually build a sustainable business? How much fees would you need to charge? $4/delivery means having to make a delivery in 15 mins to be able to pay the delivery person minimum wage. Plus Uber’s profit, plus the cost of the car and maintenance expenses + tickets, accidents, etc, It’s hard to see how a monopoly can also make mone…

The only successful version of this business I can imagine is, maybe, the ghost kitchen model that is basically App equivalent of a mall food court. So it's basically a handful of giant kitchens to serve an area that offers several styles of cuisine. You order and their delivery drivers go to the one place and bring it to you.

At that point, though, you're not gigging out delivery people. You're just hiring short-term couriers to move stuff to people from the central kitchens. This is, basically, the model that big city Chinese restaurants and pizza places had anyway before the apps muscled in by swamping them with superior SEO.

There's also a lot of cuisines that simply don't travel well and these Doordash/uber eats business are indifferent. Pizzas travel well, Chinese travels well. Sushi kind of does too assuming you can be quick. But ramen? French fries? Lots of stuff just isn't meant for it.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#107

Post by howon92 »

voz_ wrote: post #25

Uber is an example of a company that wants to be a tech company, but (1) really shouldn't (2) kinda lacks the technical leadership to really be one. It feels like the right call, around 2017, was to either: (A) double down and build a platform for every kind of physical multisided marketplace (matching as a service, maps+routing+locations+geofences as a service, physical product ops as a service, etc) Where Amazon we…

I would have nodded if I had read this comment when I was in college…

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#108

Post by prophesi »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #93
prophesi wrote: post #5

Uber's IPO prospectus pretty much says they'd only be profitable if they can achieve a global monopoly to charge their own prices, and/or hope that driverless cars become ubiquitous soon. So this isn't too surprising, and also the status quo for most startups to burn investor cash ad-infinitum until they reach the theoretical gold at the end of the rainbow.

This isn't the case. Uber repeatedly, and likely fraudulently, claimed that they were profitable ex-growth markets (iirc, they made this claim shortly before their IPO, I remember it being leaked to compliant journalists). They have never attempted to obtain a global monopoly either (they bought stakes in companies outside the US, which clearly wouldn't have given Uber itself scale economies). The only place that you…

> The only place that you saw people make the claim about driverless cars was on Reddit, management never made that claim...because it makes no sense.

No need to insult me, you can read my response to another comment in this thread where I direct them where exactly in Uber's prospectus they make these claims.

Whether they actually do what they said would make them profitable is another matter.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#109

Post by MonkeyMalarky »

hotpotamus wrote: post #99
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the "small team of focused engineers" trope for apps like uber. It's so easy to blow past that number. Website? That's a team. iPhone app? That's a team. Android? Another team. Data collection and A/B testing platform for all the front ends? Another team. Backend? A team. Infrastructure? Another team. AI solutions for problems like delivery time estimation? Another very expensive team. BI for the executives? Y…

Fairly recently I moved from a company of about 8,000 to a company of 54 or so. At first I wondered how the tiny company got anything done, but they've been around for 30 years so I figured they must have some skill. Now I wonder what the hell all those 8,000 people actually did. Each team you just named is 1-2 people at the current gig.

I work a startup with less than 15 technical employees and have experience at tech companies ranging from 100s to 100s of thousands of employees. Suggesting that one could accomplish or maintain a platform like uber with so few heads is a farce.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#110

Post by naravara »

gruez wrote: post #47
martinald wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food delivery is practical, mainstream and has been for 40+ years in the West. It works great "inhouse". They tend to know all their regular customers and area and know exactly how to get there, where to park, which bell to press etc. They will also know if there is bad traffic or an accident closing a major road and adjust wait times and order frequency accordingly. The person that runs the delivery joint can also w…

>They tend to know all their regular customers and area and know exactly how to get there >They will also know if there is bad traffic or an accident closing a major road and adjust wait times and order frequency accordingly. irrelevant in the age of GPS navigation with live traffic (ie. google maps) >where to park, which bell to press etc. while I don't doubt delivery drivers accrue such knowledge over time, I doubt…

> irrelevant in the age of GPS navigation with live traffic (ie. google maps)

The confused phone calls I get from delivery drivers just about every time I order begs to differ.

And that's assuming they bother to call rather than just leaving my order with the basement apartment or one of my neighbors or in the same address only on Northeast [name] street 8 blocks away rather than Northwest [name] street.

These drivers churn so much they never learn their way out of routine dumb mistakes like that.

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